A slightly shorter version of this interview appeared in the June 19 Washington Post. I'm posting it here because that version is virtually impossible to find on the web — and because the film reopens today at the West End Cinema.

VIVA RIVA! IS AN EXPLOITATION FLICK with a purpose.

Congolese director Djo Tunda Wa Munga's movie is straight-up gangsta, with some kinky stuff on the side. The long-absent Riva, a likable but reckless hustler, returns to fuel-starved Kinshasa with a truck full of gasoline. While being chased by the Angolan thugs from whom he stole the stuff, Riva invites more trouble by pursuing the glamorous moll of a local mobster. (Their first encounter can't be described in polite company.)

For all its B-movie sass, Viva Riva! functions as a pocket social history of Zaire (as the country was known from 1971 to 1997). It's also historical in its own right: the first feature ever produced and directed by a local filmmaker in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"It's a genre film, but also a story with social and political content and artistic vision," says the goateed Munga, sitting in an empty house at the E Street Theater, where the film played for a week in June.

In March, Viva Riva! won six African Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. Held in Nigeria, home to the booming if aesthetically sketchy Nollywood film industry, the awards generally go to movies from countries where English is an official language: mostly South Africa and Kenya, as well as Nigeria.

"The fact that they gave awards to my film, coming from a French-speaking country, is kind of like a revolution," says Munga in impeccable English.There are snatches of Portuguese and English in Viva Riva!, but most of the dialogue is in Kinshasa's dominant languages, Lingala and French. Authentically capturing local speech was essential to the director's documentary-inspired approach, although the polyglot script complicates getting the movie to a larger audience. That's true even in the Congo, where other indigenous tongues dominate in regions away from the capital. (Munga's own family language is Swahili.)

"I tried to make a film that looks and sounds like Africa today," Munga says. This includes the soundtrack, whose music the director selected to trace Congolese styles from the 1960s Rumba boom to today's techno-pop.

The movie's female lead, Ivory Coast native Manie Malone, was cast in Paris, after some Congolese actresses balked at the movie's raunchier scenes. But local singer Patsha Bay, who plays the title role, and most of other performers hail from Kinshasa.

"Choosing Congolese actors is very, very different than taking black people from Paris or London to Kinshasa to play Congolese," says Munga. "The body language is different, the way they speak is different."

Munga expected some criticism in the Congo of his movie's nudity and sex scenes, but hasn't experienced any from the few showings held so far. "They know that it's there in the reality," he suggests. "Most of Kinshasa is as I showed it."

The minister of culture attended one screening, Munga reports, and "she liked it. She said, "Oh, this a bold film. But it's a good film.' "

Munga says he's not concerned that Viva Riva! presents a harsh image of his homeland. "It's an act of maturity. Those days of hiding our country, because people will see that things are not going well, like during the dictatorship -- that time has passed. People are more honest today. They're like, `OK, this is us. This is where we are. We want to move on, we want to do things differently, but at the moment we are here.' "

Perhaps the movie has yet to draw much flak simply because it hasn't been widely seen in Kinshasa, where there are no longer any movie theaters. One of Munga's upcoming projects is to remedy that. "We won't try to open a theater," he says, "but maybe rent a place. Buy a projector, buy a sound system, and try to have comfortable seats."

Anything else?

"We need to get a generator also." He shrugs. "Everybody in Kinshasa who needs to have power all the time has a generator."

Munga was born in 1972, one year after Mobutu Sese Seko became president and changed the country's name to Zaire. As a child, he attended Kinshasa's cinemas, watching mostly kung fu flicks, Hollywood Westerns and Japanese monster movies. "The concept of an African film didn't exist in my head," he remembers.

"We had television," he adds, "but it was more like propaganda. For the president. I won't say the culture of cinema didn't exist. But we weren't making films."

In 1981, the boy was sent to boarding school in Brussels. He stayed for art college, followed by film school. Only then did he discover African directors such as Senegal's Ousmane Sembene, and also such Japanese masters as Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa. Munga cites the latter's 1949 noir, Stray Dog, as an inspiration for Viva Riva!

He knows the outlook, he jokes, "because I was born Zairean. But I changed. Now I have become Congolese."

Part of being Congolese, at least for Munga, is a commitment to build new institutions. He's working on nothing less than creating a film industry, sponsoring training programs for crew members and acting workshops for performers. "At some point, you can become very cynical," he says. "The only answer is to be responsible."

The director, who financed Viva Riva! entirely in Europe, could have stayed in Belgium, where cinemas exist and electricity is reliable. "It's nice to be in a place where everything works," he admits. "But where's your contribution to the world?"